Excerpts from two very different and
extraordinary articles. I have only selected what I believe
constitues fair use of these copyrighted arcticles. The
links will take you to the full stories.

The first is about a woman who defied
Islamic fundamentalism: "I will tell you something,
and after that if you want to say I am an infidel and I am a
threat to you, just kill me."

The second is about archery; very
different, but not unrelated at all.

Both are about knowing just where the hair
lays over the heart.

photo: Wazhma Frogh

Inside Islam, a woman's
roar

Wazhma Frogh, an
Afghan, uses her religion to press for women's rights  and
development agencies take note.

By Jill Carroll | Staff writer of The
Christian Science Monitor

Just hours after Wazhma Frogh arrived in an
isolated, conservative district in northeastern Afghanistan in
2002, the local mullah was preaching to his congregation to kill
her. Ms. Frogh was meddling with their women with her plan to
start a literacy program, he told the assembly.

As she walked past the mosque during noon
prayers, his words caught her ear. Shocked, she marched straight
into the mosque. In a flowing black chador that left her face
uncovered, she strode past the male worshipers and faced the
mullah. Trembling inside, she challenged him.

"Mullah, give me five minutes,"
she recalls saying. "I will tell you something, and after
that if you want to say I am an infidel and I am a threat to you,
just kill me."

She then rattled off five Koranic verses
 in both Arabic and the local Dari language  that
extol the virtues of education, tolerance, and not harming
others. She criticized local practices of allowing men to use
Islam to justify beating their wives, betrothing young girls, and
denying women an education.

The room was silent. All eyes were on Frogh
and the mullah. Then the mullah rested his hand on her head.

"God bless you, my daughter," he
said.

With that, Frogh won permission to start
the literacy program that later helped women from Badakhshan
Province participate in local government and run for the national
assembly.

Where rigid interpretations of Islam
relegate women to second-class status, Frogh uses rhetorical
jujitsu to turn religious arguments on their heads and win
women's rights. Her steely determination has earned her attention
in Washington.

Element Two, The
Faithful Release. Your release hand is likewise
unmoving, abiding in the place of its duty. You should
never pluck this hand off the string upon the loose; it
should not fly away as though to chase an insect from the
ear.

These are practical
principals: the bow arm is your front sight, the release
hand is your back sight. If they wobble about in the act
of shooting, then the missile lacks guidance. Simple.
Essential.

Element Three, The
Hair Over the Heart. The third element is more
subtle. It holds your eye solidly against your thought.
It glues your inner eye to your target. In this respect,
it is a principle of form as certainly as the first two
elements. You can state it most simply as "picking a
spot." Picking a spot means seeing nothing but that
spot and then bearing down on it. Not the animal or the
target, not the incidentals to either side of the arrow's
path, not even the arrow itself when you shoot
instinctively. Just the spot.

This element of barebow shooting
is so important and, often, so elusive that I want to
pursue it to some conclusion. Especially as it affects
the two styles of shooting barebow: the one that is aware
of the arrow (gap shooting) and the one that is not
(instinctive).

[bulk of
article deleted for copyright reasons]

Instinctive archery is all about
possibilities. Mechanist archery is all about
alternatives.

Of course the world does not divvy
up into such neat camps. No one of us is a technocrat in
all matters, nor equally a primitive, either. Most of the
time we select and balance, dealing in commingled shades
of gray. Not everyone who shoots compounds has them
tricked out. Not everyone who shoots sticks and strings
barebow shoots instinctively. Gap shooting blends a
little from both worlds. It shoots barebow, but it sights
the arrow. To do it well, you must become the arrow.
Byron Ferguson wrote a book about it.

Ishi by all accounts was woeful at
the burlap butts. I don't think he knew how to become the
arrow. By these same accounts he was a focused and
successful hunter. I think you get this way by knowing
just where the hair lays over the heart. And having a
faith so optimistic it bridges gaps your mind may reason
cannot be bridged by you alone. Faith so profound that
when you recognize the spot, that is where you are. Not
where you are looking, not even where you are going, but
where you are. Inside it. All of you. Ishi did not become
the arrow, I suspect. The arrow became Ishi.

The remedy for the frustration that
attends scattering instinctive arrows on the burlap
sometimes and grouping them tightly at other times? Work
to strengthen your faith with each practice arrow you
loose. Be happy for it. And stay optimistic.